Sony has purchased a 95 per cent stake in anime distributor Funimation for $143 million, essentially acquiring the company. The remaining five per cent will be retained by current CEO Gen Fukunaga, who will continue to serve in his current role despite the takeover. In addition to selling DVDs and merchandise, Funimation recently launched a streaming service, offering over 400 favourites like Dragon Ball Z and Cowboy Bebop on-demand.

Of course, this isn’t Sony’s first foray into the world of anime: it also owns and operates the ANIMAX network, which airs in 23 countries around the globe. It’ll be interesting to see whether it tries to combine the brands in order to create some kind of ultimate anime destination – or if it will continue to operate them independently.

Around the world, Sony's networks have been major players in the anime space for nearly two decades, and in more recent years we have rapidly increased our networks' over-the-top and digital offerings to consumers,” said Sony Pictures Television’s Andy Kaplan. “With the acquisition of Funimation, the combined IP of ANIMAX, KIDS STATION, and Funimation allows us to deliver the best anime to fans across all screens and platforms.”

Source: http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/08/sony_snaps_up_anime_distributor_funimation_for_usd143_million

Hmm. Interesting. I wonder what they're gonna do with it. I just hope I keep seeing more funimation anime on crunchyroll.

Sweet :P

Does this mean Sony own Dragon Ball Z now? I see its a license product of Funimation.

I still have a Funimation sub, even though I rarely use it. Kinda curious how this will affect me personally. If they raise the price, I'll probably limit myself to Crunchyroll, which seems to be getting a lot of Funimation programs now.

If they stop sharing...well I'll probably return to the Grand Line, if you catch my drift.

After that smiley movie, I'll write this under bad news.

Not in the slightest.

Sony will do the same as Funimation has to do. Talk to Japanese companies that own the animation of said shows and pay to get the rights to distribute them/dub them in the U.S.

Funimation I doubt owns a single cartoon. It just buys rights to air cartoons or publishes them per say.

This move doesn't give Sony for example any rights in a DBZ movie, or a DBZ video game.

Did Sony have any distribution rights to anime that are exclusive to them before this?

Does this mean more anime on CR/Funimation?

They could make an animation studio to make cartoon of some of their IPs

Considering that Sony has been an important part of Anime production for decades with Aniplex and the A-1 Pictures?  They were already a big player in this type of media.